HEADSPACE: Taylor Knox

Taylor Knox joined the ASP World Tour the same year that Snow’s Informer made the Billboard Top Single for seven straight weeks. Yep, 1993 was a good year, and the Carlsbad native spent 18 more years etching his powerful surfing into competitive surfing’s collective memory before retiring from the Tour at the end of 2012. Despite competing relentlessly for the better part of two decades, when we sat down to speak with him, Knox said that he never felt like he had the “stone cold killer” instinct he needed to be to be a successful competitor. That he already feels more at home traveling independently in search of waves than he did climbing the ASP Tour rankings with 33 of his closest friends.

Which is surprising. For one, as a teenager, Knox battled (and defeated) a spine injury that threatened to paralyze. And although Knox never brought a World Title home to Carlsbad, it’d be hard to deny him status as a consummate competitor. Almost twenty years on Tour is nothing to sneeze at. Most recently, Knox has focused his attention toward creating a fitness series for surfers called SurfFit while enjoying an opportunity to travel on his own terms and become a more well-rounded surfer and person.

When we caught up with Taylor in Hawaii, he shared a bunch of pearls with us. He believes this isn’t his last lifetime. He’s very afraid of getting eaten by bears, and, apparently, super glue heals all wounds. More where that came from.